For Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar It Is

The 47 MLAs of Bhartiya Janata Party unanimously elected Manohar Lal Khattar as Haryana chef minister today.

Khattar, who made his electoral debut this assembly election, won the Karnal seat by a margin of over 63,000 votes.

Reportedly, the swearing-in of the new chief minister and other ministers is likely to take place Oct 26. The ceremony could be held at a sports stadium in Panchkula town, 15 km from Chandigarh, instead of the Haryana Raj Bhavan.

Sixty year old Khattar is a master strategist who spent early years as RSS pracharak. He joined RSS in 1977 at the age of 24 and became a full-time pracharak in 1980. He spent nearly 35 years in this role before joining BJP two decades ago.

Khattar never married and has proved his skills in the various roles he was given by the party.

In 1996, he was made transport minister in the Bansi Lal-led Haryana Vikas Party government where BJP was an ally. However, the alliance was broken when Khattar favoured withdrawal of support from the government as he felt it was proving costly to the BJP.

On his opinion, the BJP then decided to provide outside support to Om Prakash Chautala. Later, this coalition with the INLD won all 10 seats in Haryana in the 1999 parliamentary elections.

Khattar has worked extensively with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. During his chief ministership of Gujarat, Modi had called upon Khattar to manage elections in Kutch district in the aftermath of Bhuj earthquakes. BJP won three out of six seats.

He has been in-charge of 12 states at the same time working for the betterment of the party. Khattar was chosen to be the chairman of the BJP’s Haryana election committee for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He delivered seven out of 10 Lok Sabha seats in the party’s kitty.

Khattar will be the first Haryana CM who is not from the majority Jat community.